Strive4Karuna wrote:Anyone have any experience with this or ideas on how to overcome? Especially experiences from childhood? Abuse, severe neglect, being an orphan etc.

Cultivation of the brahma-viharas.

Metta,Retro.

If you have asked me of the origination of unease, then I shall explain it to you in accordance with my understanding: Whatever various forms of unease there are in the world, They originate founded in encumbering accumulation. (Pārāyanavagga)

Exalted in mind, just open and clearly aware, the recluse trained in the ways of the sages:One who is such, calmed and ever mindful, He has no sorrows! -- Udana IV, 7

Be kind to yourself. I sometimes find that because Buddhism teaches "the way out of suffering" I fall into my old ex-Christian habits of feeling that if I am suffering I am sinning - i.e. it is morally wrong of me to feel suffering/pain/sadness/etc. This totally misses the point, so when you look at Buddhism to help you heal and teach you to cope with suffering, don't inadvertently inflict more suffering on yourself. Of course you may not do that anyway, but it is one of my early pitfalls.

It's an interesting question. Psychologists studied the monks who came from Tibet and were emprisoned and tortured, and they concluded that they had no PTSD sympthoms. The only explanation is that they practice meditation.

Bhante Yuttadhammo, iirc, told the story of a woman who was abused when she was a child and went to therapists for years and never got over the traumatic event. She was very miserable. He said that she learned to meditate (properly) and she got to a much more peaceful state of mind.

On the other hand, I've read that a person who was abused during childhood, went on a retreat and got out of there earlier and s/he said that it was like living it all over again and that s/he couldn't stop thinking about it.

What lessons can we take from this? In my humble opinion, it's that meditation can help you a lot, but to do it in apropriate dosages.

He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: 'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' (Jhana Sutta - Thanissaro Bhikkhu translation)

Modus.Ponens wrote:What lessons can we take from this? In my humble opinion, it's that meditation can help you a lot, but to do it in apropriate dosages.

This is important - you can't just power through trauma by racking up a certain number of hours on the cushion. Brahmaviharas, mindfulness, and samadhi are incredibly helpful when it comes to dealing with painful experiences, but they are also capable of doing great harm when practiced or developed incorrectly.

Gain and loss, status and disgrace, censure and praise, pleasure and pain:these conditions among human beings are inconstant,impermanent, subject to change.

Strive4Karuna wrote:Anyone have any experience with this or ideas on how to overcome? Especially experiences from childhood? Abuse, severe neglect, being an orphan etc.

Yes, I have.Practice sila, Samadhi, and panna.It has worked, and continues to work, for me.kind regards,

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725